The present invention generally relates to document creating apparatuses and computer program products therefor, and more particularly to a document creating apparatus which receives handwritten data generated by a handwritten data input device and creates a document having a free format and to a computer program product for such a document creating apparatus.
Recently, handwritten data input devices for inputting handwritten data to a document processing apparatus have become popular, particularly with portable document creating apparatuses such as the so-called handy electronic notebook type personal computers. The handwritten data input device supports input of the handwritten data, and it is desirable that the handwritten data input device enables document creation with a free format.
In the document creating apparatus which creates a document in response to handwritten data generated from the handwritten data input device, two input modes are provided, namely, a graphic input mode and a character input mode. According to the graphic input mode, the handwritten data are stored as they are in a memory and are displayed on a display screen. On the other hand, according to the character input mode, the handwritten data are converted into data having a prescribed normalized size and are stored in the memory while arranging the normalized data in a line, and the arranged data are displayed on the display screen.
A conventional document creating apparatus is designed to specify in advance the input mode with which the document is to be created. In the case of the graphic input mode, the document is created using the hand written data as they are without using the character input mode. On the other hand, in the ease of the character input mode, the document is created while converting the handwritten data into the data having the normalized size and arranging the normalized data in a line, without using the graphic input mode.
The document to be created may consist of one or more characters, symbols or spaces, one or more words, one or more sentences, graphics and the like.
In the conventional document creating apparatus, the normalized size is specified in advance when creating the document in the character input mode. The document is thus created by converting the handwritten data into the data having the specified normalized size and rearranging the normalized data in a line.
However, according to the conventional document creating apparatus, there was a problem in that the format of the document that can be created is limited, because it is impossible to create a document in which the handwritten data that can be converted into the normalized size and the handwritten data that cannot be converted into the normalized size coexist.
In addition, there was a problem in that the format of the document that can be created is limited, since it is impossible to create a document in which the handwritten data to be converted into different normalized sizes coexist.